This was part of the absurd attempt to change public perceptions of Divine Light Mission (see ???? ). As I recall Chris was a very nice guy and I recall he was a ship's pilot travelling up and down the East Coast of Australia, certainly-a-one-of-a-kind premie.

Letters to the Digger Editor

November/December 1974.

Divine Light Refocused

Sorry this letter got a bit long, but please don't abridge it if you decide to publish it.

I empathise with your cartooner (back page Digger on 37 "Truth is a Four Letter Word"). Also appreciated Frank Stares' rave the issue before (Digger no. 36 - "This Knowledge is Not Chocolate - Confessions of a Diviine Light Renegade"). A point I would like to raise however, is that the Divine Light Mission is changing, rapidly and continually.

"Hey! How would it be if every head on the whole planet were up here with mine?"

It's a little like (dare I say it) acid?

You are when one receives Knowledge one becomes in most cases very, very high. And when one is walking about in this state one realizs something.

While going through a few post-Knowledge ups and downs the understanding grows and strengthens that normal (low) states of consciousness are very difficult things to work with and no fun at all, and that everything would be much less viscous if the whole Earth were high.

But a couple of years ago there were no guidelines for getting this sort of thing on. We sat around and grinned at each other for a while and then we all went to see our old buddies. And can you imagine our surprise? They didn't want to know, nearly all of them. And after all these years of collective soul-searching and consciousness raising.

Only slightly daunted, however, we very blissfully set off to cram the Knowledge past the guardian tonsils of the whole world. The euphoric feeling that in these apparently Apocalyptic days almost anything may happen at any time lent colour and emphasis to our words, and after dashing home from our newly-found jobs we would surge out into the streets, thrusting pamphlets towards almost universally unreceptive fists. When we ran out we would retrieve them from gutters and garbage bins and recycle them. (Yes, real True Confessions stuff this.) Public programmes became larger and more sophisticated, and inadvertantly probably gave rise to some super-Organisation-type paranoia. (Bit of a joke this one actually.) But still we felt, if only they would listen)

Well at some stage or other, I forget exactly when, the first negative feedback started coming down from the media. We had just started something called "Divine Sales", a jumble shop intended to "reach people" through selling second-hand stuff to pensioners and winos in the inner-city Sydney area. The first I heard about it from the media it sounded like a multi-million dollar retail complex. We were amazed. The end of the beginning was blatently at hand.

But we hour learned a lot. The Aquarian Age (if indeed there be such a thing) is not going to begin next Tuesday (probably), and may in fact be several decades to become conspicuously functionable. In the meantime under Maharaj Ji's guidance we have gone almost underground, or at least very low key. We are acepting the Knowledge for what it is … an internal source of energy and love which obviates the need for personal power games and psychic vampirism, and enables people to live in harmony and tranquility together. We are allocating more and more of our mostly wage-earned money to long-term projects such as an alternative lifestyle community development. It may take a little longer, but we have the manpower now, and the results are already looking very positive.

See you after a while
Chris Hamerton
Secretary Divine Light Mission
Cairns, Qid.